18 Facts About Hama

Hama carried off to Nimrud the ivory-adorned furnishings of its kings.

Hama was an important city during the Greek and Roman periods, but very little archaeological evidence remains.

Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi writes Hama became a part of Jund Qinnasrin during Abbasid rule.

Persian geographer Nasir Khusraw noted in 1047 that Hama was "well populated" and stood on the banks of the Orontes River.

Hama granted the city to his nephew, al-Muzaffar Umar, four years later, putting it under the rule of his Ayyubid family.

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Hama was sacked by the Mongols in 1260, as were most other Syrian cities, but the Mongols were defeated that same year and then again in 1303 by the Mamluks who succeeded the Ayyubids as rulers of the region.

Hama briefly passed to Mamluk control in 1299 after the death of governor al-Mansur Mahmoud II.

However, unlike other former Ayyubid cities, the Mamluks reinstated Ayyubid rule in Hama by making Abu al-Fida, the historian and geographer, governor of the city and he reigned from 1310 to 1332.

Hama grew prosperous during the Ayyubid period, as well as the Mamluk period.

Under the Ottomans, Hama gradually became more important in the administrative structure of the region.

Hama became an important center for trade routes running east from the Mediterranean coast into Asia.

The governor of Hama was tasked in 1692 with settling Turkoman nomads in the Hama-Homs region under the aegis of the Ottoman Empire's tribal settlement program.

The 1925 Hama uprising occurred in the city during the Great Syrian Revolt against the French.

Akram al-Hawrani, a member of an impoverished notable family in Hama, began to agitate for land reform and better social conditions.

Hama made Hama the base of his Arab Socialist Party, which later merged with another socialist party, the Ba'ath.

The Hama Massacre led to the military term "Hama Rules" meaning the complete large-scale destruction of a military objective or target.

Hama is reputed to be the most conservative Sunni Muslim city in Syria since French Mandate times.

Hama is still a Roman Catholic titular see, suffragan of Apamea.